Thursday, June 18, 2015

A Call to Action

Pope Francis says climate change is the overarching environmental challenge of our time — and we have a moral obligation to confront it.

Our sister, Mother Earth, says the pope, “cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by the irresponsible use of the goods with which God has endowed her.”

With those words, Pope Francis calls not only on the world’s 2.2 billion Christians but also on all “men and women of goodwill” to act as faithful stewards of the earth’s waters, skies, wildlife, and lands.

In the encyclical he issued from the Vatican on Thursday, the pope makes clear that climate change is the overarching environmental challenge of our time, a widening scourge we have a duty to confront.

The pope isn’t holding out the peril of climate change as an article of faith. Science tells us the bedrock truth about what’s happening to our natural world. Faith picks up where science leaves off, helping to guide our individual and collective response as stewards of all creation. Pope Francis is imploring people of goodwill everywhere to honor our moral obligation to protect future generations from the dangers of further climate chaos by embracing our ethical duty to act.

And beyond our common charge to safeguard the planet, he writes, we are called on to help the poor.

Scores of millions of the world’s poorest people are living on the front lines of climate disaster. All too often, it is the most vulnerable among us — infants and children, expectant mothers, the elderly, the infirm — who suffer first and are hurt the worst from the hazards of climate change.

We have a responsibility, the pontiff tells us, to do better — by the planet and by our fellow human beings.

The former bishop of Buenos Aires, Pope Francis has a personal commitment to people living in poverty. He has rightly tied the hardships of the global poor to environmental degradation.

“It is man who has slapped nature in the face,” he explained on a January visit to the Philippines, where unusually warm oceans contributed to the 2013 cyclone that killed more than 6,300 people and left 4 million homeless. “I think we have exploited nature too much.”

On that point, there can be no doubt. Our world is telling us every way it knows how that it’s time to cut the fossil-fuel pollution that’s driving climate change.

The dangerous carbon pollution we’ve pumped into the atmosphere by burning oil, gas, and coal has raised the average global temperature by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit over little more than the past century.

Last year was the hottest since record-keeping began 135 years ago. The 16 hottest years on record have all occurred since 1997. We know our climate is changing, and we know what’s causing it. The question we haven’t yet answered is the most vital one: What are we going to do about it?

That’s why the papal encyclical is so important. For our convictions to have meaning and purpose, they must shape the way we live. Putting belief into action drives progress. That’s what the pope reminds us this week.

Faith can help us to clarify the choices that impact our lives, cast our options in the light of our values, and illuminate the stakes in the paths that we choose. The pope has put before us one of the most profound spiritual questions of our time: Will we embrace our moral obligation to be responsible stewards of the world that’s been entrusted to our care, or preside over the ruin of the natural systems upon which all life depends?

Our answer will determine whether our children inherit a future that’s redeemed by our commitment to get this right or condemned by our failure to act. It will say much about our willingness to live out the power and purpose of our beliefs. It will be the legacy we leave...

Protect Alaska's Walruses From Dirty Oil Drilling and Global Warming

Walrus moms and their babies spend all year living on the sea ice off Alaska. But global warming is melting that ice and forcing them to come to shore.

Walrus babies face greater risks on land because they are vulnerable to being trampled to death in stampedes and attacked by predators. In 2007, 3,000 to 4,000 young walruses perished after being crushed to death in stampedes.

Walruses also face a serious threat from big oil companies that want to open up offshore drilling in the walrus's ocean home off Alaska. This drilling will put walruses at risk from oil spills and worsen the global warming pollution that is destroying the sea ice they need for survival.

The federal government is considering giving walruses increased protections under the Endangered Species Act that would help reduce dangers to walruses and encourage government action to fight global warming.Please sign the petition below asking the government to protect the walrus as an endangered species and put a permanent halt to offshore drilling off Alaska.

In the Hawaiian islands collectively known as Maui Nui, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service now has a chance to make good on this past oversight by finalizing a rule that will grant critical habitat protections to 135 imperiled species all at once.

The eastern puma -- a subspecies of the animal also known as cougar or mountain lion, which still lives across the West -- is officially extinct. The Fish and Wildlife Service this week removed the animal from its list of protected wildlife and plants under the Endangered Species Act. In fact, the eastern cougar was extinct well before it was protected under the Act, as was the case with eight of the other 10 species that have been delisted for extinction. Eastern pumas were driven into smaller and smaller areas between the 1790s and 1890s due to human persecution -- along with the extirpation, through hunting, of their primary prey, white-tailed deer. The last three eastern pumas were killed in 1930 in Tennessee, 1932 in New Brunswick and 1938 in Maine. Pumas were once the most widely distributed mammal in the Americas, extending from the Yukon in Canada to the southern tip of South America.http://biologicaldiversity.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=yjtcmJQiE0g2o%2BgG2yTye5xE8WkCyBGV

Lonesome George

Every now and then George closes his eyes for a few centuries the stars stop for the occasion and the sun goes out, his night lit only by dream...

"Hello, big boy," she says, shell new and lustrous, green as the deep sea; and her eyes deep as the dark gems that glow deep where it roots...

George, lifting his nose skyward still seeing her behind his closed eyes moves forwardslow as lava oozing from the bottom of the sea

His scaled feet arch like trees first planted then pulled up from their roots...

"I'm coming," he says.

Written by, Steve Campbell

"Lonesome George" is the name given by biologists to the last surviving male Giant Galapagos Tortoise. There are no surviving females.

The entire Giant Galapagos Tortoise species was destroyed directly by humans. The tortoise's shells were used to make tourist trinkets. The shell is part of the tortoise's body (like turtles). Without their shell, they die much like a human having their skin removed (I imagine, equally as painful).

The animal was usually still alive when it's 'soft' body was cruelly cut out from it's shell. In countries like China, and the Island of Bali, this brutal and unethical practice of live tortoise/turtle slaughter continues.

George is approximately 90 years old. In 2008, great efforts were made to help George produce offspring by fertilizing eggs of a 'close' relative species. Sadly, the experiment failed.

George is the rarest known creature in the world and... the loneliest.